My twenty-one-month-old has a weight problem. I have a weight problem. Our individual weight problems are affecting each other and (possibly) making each other worse. I am overweight. My daughter is off the charts underweight. Yeah, so much for fat being contagious. I wish it were in this case. Maybe then I’d have one less pediatrician hanging around my neck like an anchor of concern.

Being underweight can be very serious. It can cause developmental delays. I understand this and have been on the lookout for any sign of lethargy or dullness in my daughter and I see none. She is bright, talkative and energetic. I see no reason to be concerned. That said, it is really annoying when people say things like “Oh she’s lucky! I wish I had that problem!” Hm. So having language issues or motor skills delays are totally acceptable as long as you don’t get fat. Noted.

I’m also a wee bit cranky because I’ve made the mistake of reading the commentary surrounding Kevin Smith getting kicked off his Southwest flight for being too fat. I’m not new to the internet, the vitriol spewed forth really shouldn’t shock me at all, but I just don’t get it. Why is there so much fat hatred? What exactly gets people so riled up about fat people? The gist of a lot of the comments was that fat people choose to be fat. They could change, but they’re just too lazy. That ALL you have to do is eat less and exercise. “Who are these people?” I wonder. Have they ever been fat? Have they really successfully lost weight and kept it off? Weight loss and eating is an area where everyone is an expert. Everyone knows some diet that absolutely worked for their husband’s cousin’s sister’s mother. Or they have lost weight themselves (but have they kept it off and for how long?)

I’m a huge Absolutely Fabulous fan and one of my all-time favorite bits from the British comedy is an exchange between Edina and her daughter, Saffron. Edina is complaining about how much weight she’s gained and Saffron offers her typically no-nonsense take:

“Saffie: Look, mum. All you've got to do is eat less and take a bit of exercise.
Eddie: Sweetie, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it…”

The one thing trying to lose weight has taught me is that this is one of the hardest things in the world to do. It takes constant daily effort. I have lost weight in a lot of different ways through the years. Some of those ways involved, if not disordered eating, then at least some very profoundly unhealthy choices. In my senior year of high school after gaining about thirty pounds rather rapidly, I spent the summer living off plain rice, coffee and cigarettes. I lost weight. I also gained it right back when I started behaving like a human being again. A few years later I decided to try juice fasting. I would survive for a week at a time on fruit and vegetable juice. After one of these stunts I tried to go back to eating solid food and got so violently sick I nearly vomited all over myself while at work. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t normal or healthy. However, because “at least I was trying to lose weight” no one questioned me.

Now my daughter is underweight. We are trying our best to get her to gain some weight while I am trying to lose weight. My house is full of butter, full-fat cheese, whole milk and, at any given time, McDonald’s french fries. This is the minefield I have to navigate every day and that doesn’t even include all the other things I have to do in order to lose weight in some semblance of a healthy way. My weight loss this time has been agonizingly slow- an average of a few ounces a week. I am eating fruits and veggies and whole grains as much as I can. I try to drink lots of water and get healthy fats like olive oil. But for those people who say “all you have to do is…” I would like to share some of what “all you have to do…” entails.

I write everything I eat down. Every. Single. Bite. That one fry I stole from my daughter? Gotta write it down. Every meal. Every day. I measure and weigh all my food.  This means that, in addition to all the pots and pans I cook with and the plates and utensils I eat with, I must also wash a load of tablespoons and teaspoons and measuring cups. Eating out is an exercise in anxiety. I try to know where we’re eating ahead of time so I can look up the nutrition information online. This can be an ordeal in itself. Restaurants actively avoid making nutrition information easily available. I don’t choose from the menu based on what sounds most tasty to me, I choose from the often rather narrow selection of food that seems lower in calories. I do not choose anything with the words cream (in any form: creamed, cream of, creamy), fried, breaded, cheese sauce (sauce of any kind really), hollandaise, gravy, au gratin, bisque, sautéed. I look for the harder to find: baked, grilled, steamed. I ask for everything “on the side.” Even all this doesn’t guarantee I won’t unintentionally eat a day’s worth of calories in one meal. Portion sizes everywhere have expanded beyond reason. Seemingly healthy sounding choices often are not. At Ruby Tuesdays, for example, a steak is a far better calorie choice than a veggie burger. The Petite Sirloin comes in at 205 calories and 5 grams of fat. The veggie burger? 610 calories and 28 grams of fat  Take that PETA.

I run at least three miles a day at least three times a week. To the “just eat less and exercise more” crowd: when I started the couch to 5K program I was eating no more than usual and exercising quite a bit more. I should have lost weight. I lost exactly nothing. Just trying to intuit portion sizes and what “less” is doesn’t work for me. I must weigh and measure. I must look at package labels and calculate calories and fiber and fat. I must go to AA-like meetings once a week and weigh myself. All of this takes a great deal of time, money, energy and brain power I could be devoting to other things. And this is when my emotional state is normal and I'm not completely stressed out. This is how “easy” it is.

And to keep the weight off? Well I must simply keep doing all this. For the Rest. Of. My. Life. So I can completely see why someone would say, “fuck it.” The world is not built for people trying to eat reasonably let alone lose weight. We are surrounded with high-calorie convenience food everywhere we go. Advertising for food is ubiquitous and it is never fruits and vegetables being advertised. Most of us eat in restaurants at least once a week and the choices and portion sizes are horrendous. Most jobs now are completely sedentary which means people have to make time outside of working a full day and whatever other responsibilities they may have to exercise. Some of us live in “food deserts” where healthy choices are very hard to some by. And every one of us has a lot more to worry about than just what we’re eating. So “all you have to do?” Please. Instead of waxing poetic on personal responsibility, how about we all work on making the food environment in this country less toxic for everyone?